"No, but I shall only be an ordinary performer after this week."
"But I'd rather be an ordinary performer and keep my neck whole than be an extraordinary one and risk my life every night," Mrs. Tate retorted sharply. She was vexed with Blanche for not appreciating her emancipation.
They rode on in silence for a few moments. Then Blanche said,—
"There's some one going to take my place, you know."
"Some one that's going to make that dreadful plunge?" Mrs. Tate cried in horror.
"No, not that. She jumps into a tank of water—from a platform—only about forty feet. My jump is more than seventy-five feet," Blanche added with a touch of pride.
Mrs. Tate rested her hands in her lap and burst out laughing. "What a ridiculous thing! I beg your pardon, dear, but I can't help being amused. Of course it doesn't seem funny to you. You're used to it; but it does to me."
Then she questioned Blanche about the new performer, and Blanche repeated what Jules had told her and what she had since heard of the woman at the Hippodrome. Mrs. Tate was greatly interested, and laughed immoderately; afterward, however, when she had returned home and thought over the conversation, she regarded it more seriously.
"What do you think, Percy?" she said at the dinner table that night. "Those Hippodrome people have engaged a creature to dive into a tank of water from a platform. Of course, that's to take the place of Madame Le Baron's plunge. Could anything be more absurd? The worst of it is that the poor little woman is frightfully jealous already. I could see that from the way she talked. What a dreadful world it is, isn't it? They're all like that, aren't they, even the best of them? Do you remember that poor Madame Gardini who sang here one night? She told me if she had her life to live over again she'd never dream of going on the stage. She said opera-singers were the unhappiest people in the world,—just poisoned with jealousy. And these circus people are exactly like them!"
"What makes you think she's jealous? What was it she said?"